Oh, how words can come back to haunt you. Greg Winn, Telstra’s US operational chief and one of chief executive Sol Trujillo’s famed three amigos, must be regretting his disparaging remarks last year about Apple’s iPhone.

Winn, who is considered second in command at Telstra and has a hand in all major product decisions, was copping a terrible shellacking on internet chat sessions last week following Telstra’s surprise announcement that it would be marketing the iPhone Down Under after all, in competition with Optus and Vodafone.Back in February last year Winn notoriously had this to say about the iPhone in a media interview:

“There’s an old saying, stick to your knitting, and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting.”

“You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality.”

“I think people overreacted to the iPhone. There was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it.”

Apparently there was enough new about it for Sol Trujillo to pursue last week’s deal with vigour.

The 3G iPhone goes on sale at Telstra, Optus and Vodafone stores from July 11.

EXCERPT: The rollout of Apple, Inc’s iPhones in India is set to be the largest, anywhere in the world. It is understood from industry sources that Apple’s iPhones will be sold through about 2.5 lakh Vodafone and Airtel retail outlets including franchisee owned shops. This rollout would be mammoth when compared to iPhones being available only in about 7000 AT&T outlets in the US apart from the Apple Stores.

“Most phone makers want their products in as many stores as possible and Apple is changing its strategy from exclusivity to wider availability,” said an analyst from a brokerage house who did not wish to be named. Airtel announced yesterday that they would be selling iPhones in India. Earlier Vodafone inked a deal last week to rollout iPhones in 10 countries including India.

It is apparent that iPhone will be available by multiple carriers in all major markets and at least two carriers will offer iPhone in India (Bharti AirTel and Vodafone). Our understanding is that 1 lakh translates to 100,000 … The Ryaz.net article states that iphone will be available through 2.5 lakh (which translates to 250,000) distribution points. Perhaps something was lost in our translation as this number (250,000) is not realistic even in a nation as populace as India. We suspect something like 25,000 is possible albeit this is also a mammoth number of distribution points. Update: Sources have confirmed the 250,000 points of distribution in India.

India is a highly competitive cellular market with many low cost plans. For a more detailed analysis of the Indian wireless markets, visit iPhonAsia post featuring video and audio interviews with Duncan Clark, Chairman BDA. The NPR interview at the bottom of this post contains discussion of the India wireless market.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has done a bit of reading between the lines … He sees something in what’s missing. In a company note on Apple released yesterday Gene Munster wrote:

“We believe Apple’s agreement with Vodafone in these 10 countries is not exclusive, based on the language of Vodafone’s press release today. In the past, carriers have announced exclusivity as a key component of the agreement, but Vodafone did not reference any exclusive terms.”